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Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#291

Post by nus07 »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #45
nus07 wrote: post #16

I mean I graduated top 5% of my class and make early 6 figures. My friend who graduated bottom 5% is now a crypto millionaire living in Dubai. Meanwhile I can write complex Scala code but I have no idea what blockchain , NFT , crypto is all about apart from the fact that it made my friend rich and made early adopters rich . How , why , when I don’t know . What’s the gain, purpose of it - I don’t know . Then again I d…

If you had millions why would you pick Dubai to live in?

My friend first moved to Hong Kong since they had a strong crypto community and something to do with regulations. After the recent issues with China in HK he moved base to Dubai . He told me it’s something to do with regulations of crypto - I don’t understand too much of it tbh.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#292

Post by beaconstudios »

mike741 wrote: post #240
awild wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A chair's proof of concept doesn't burn the energy of a small industrialized nation?

Computers as a whole burn the energy of many small industrialized nations. Is that to say computers shouldn't be used? Or is it simply a statement of how widely used computers are?

you need to take the cost/benefit. Computers may use a lot of energy but they're essentially the nervous system of collective humanity now - they're eminently useful. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand - their primary utility is taking person A's money and giving it to person B without producing any beneficial side effects.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#293

Post by exdsq »

kyle-rb wrote: post #130
unemphysbro wrote: post #19

why? i think it's the coolest thing ever. anyone can write a contract to automate taking out a loan, investing it, and pulling out the money, develop exotic securities, and bespoke arbitration. anyone can do it regardless of credentials or connections; just a month of learning. pretty darn cool to have unbridled access to a distributed computer.

Who is offering automated loans? "Regardless of credentials or connections" sounds like I don't need any credit history or anything, how do they trust me with this free money? And I already have unbridled access to my own computer, which seems to have more compute power than the EVM.

Essentially, at the moment, over-collateralized loans. Deposit $100 and borrow $90, if you pay back $95 by tomorrow you get your original $100 back. There's actually some really cool and complex financial instruments you can build by combining these and the nature of atomic transactions on the blockchain (you can take a loan and pay it back in the same transaction while using the money in other txs to get a profit, it's really weird HFT).

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#294

Post by ShamelessC »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #197
Comevius wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire crypto landscape is dirty tricks and frauds already. The blockchain is just an immutable data structure (a hash or vector commitment tree). It works like ink on a paper, but it's publicly verifiable. What happens on it, and how that's interpreted is a different question. A blockchain is like having an append-only log in someone's house. Everyone can look at it, nobody can erase from it, and everyone can bu…

Why be afraid of fraud on blockchain? In the case of DeFi the contracts are technically readable (though EVM is not a good platform for readability; if you can't name projects which have fixed this you don't have the right to make fun of "its early"), and those that cannot read contracts for whatever reason are fully aware of the risk they take - when more versed people agree in unison there are no inbuilt scams the…

> Why be afraid of fraud on blockchain? In the case of DeFi the contracts are technically readable (though EVM is not a good platform for readability; if you can't name projects which have fixed this you don't have the right to make fun of "its early"), and those that cannot read contracts for whatever reason are fully aware of the risk they take - when more versed people agree in unison there are no inbuilt scams the laymen can remove their risk.

Being readable will not stop bugs. This is the history of software engineering. Heartbleed went unnoticed for years, for instance. Putting the onus on the participants to verify a bug-free smart contract is kind of absurd if you ask me. It's just not possible and definitely won't scale.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#295

Post by exdsq »

unemphysbro wrote: post #282
JaimeThompson wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except humans haven't developed ways to write bug free code except in a very few limited circumstances none of which crypto uses.

hence the recent renaissance in formal methods eg. https://www.certik.com/

Formal methods doesn't necessarily mean that you're building the right thing which catches quite a few projects out. I do really enjoy getting to work with them though :D

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#297

Post by ShamelessC »

logicalmonster wrote: post #126
omegaworks wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a lot of research and development into blockchain technology by very smart people. That is precisely why this is such a societally detrimental technology. The communities that are forming around it are self-reinforcing and suck up both monetary and intellectual capital. All of this hype about crypto's "potential" is demolished in Dan's excellent work. >It's a lack of imagination to think that because crypto…

> Proof of work combined with the deflationary nature of these currencies is literally the antithesis of efficiency. 1) First of all, are we discussing crypto as a currency or blockchains as a technology? Your criticisms seem all over the place here. 2) Maybe talking negatively about the dangers of deflationary currencies while we're in a period of economic inflation and peoples' purchasing power is being deliberatel…

> If an oracle relies on a single source of truth (centralized), that can lead to issues: the data source can be hacked in a man-in-the-middle attack, or altered by its owner, in order to sway smart contracts. Decentralized oracles (consensus oracles) increase the reliability of the information provided to smart contracts by querying multiple data sources, thus distributing trust between participants. However, this does not achieve trustlessness, since oracles are not part of the main blockchain consensus, and thus not part of the security mechanisms of public blockchains.

https://wikiless.org/wiki/Blockchain_oracle

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#298

Post by ShamelessC »

RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #178
adam_arthur wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intrinsic value of pokemon is the enjoyment you get out of playing. Thus people are willing to pay money to play it. "Investments" in crypto tend to have value because you can sell it to somebody else for more, not because the intrinsic value increases over time. E.g. like a cashflowing business increasing their cashflow, or raising rents on a rental property. This is self referential, people aren't paying more b…

People buy expensive art because its popular. They also do nothing but stare at it every once in a while. Is that intrinsic value? Because if that is, then so is crypto.

The argument you're presenting is an inherently political one but you're talking about it as though these ideas are new and haven't been debated already.

Yes, we're aware that capitalism has a lot of things that look a lot like crypto. Do you know what? Those are the worst parts of capitalism. You're describing artificial scarcity. You're seeing large sums of money go to things you don't personally value and that probably don't deserve as much as more noble efforts. Is it fair? Fuck no. Does that somehow merit _more_ of it? Absolutely not.

Arguing against these inherently political notions with regard to crypto is _exhausting_. You are basically implying that other people who don't get on board are hypocrites when the fact is that reality is so much more nuanced than these low-effort reactionary whataboutisms and many people see that as clear as day.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#299

Post by endisneigh »

sib301 wrote: post #262
endisneigh wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In total, the entire Solana network — with 1,196 validator nodes and an estimated 20,000,000,000 transactions — uses an estimated 11,051,066 kWh per year. This is the equivalent of the average electricity usage of 1038 American households. https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-...

How much does AWS use for a comparable number of transactions? Your numbers don’t mean anything without additional context.

> …you'd resist the urge to jump to conclusions, you'd find with a couple of minutes of research that its energy usage is comparable to a few average households.

>> …uses an estimated 11,051,066 kWh per year. This is the equivalent of the average electricity usage of 1038 American households.

>>> How much does AWS use for a comparable number of transactions? Your numbers don’t mean anything without additional context.

lol

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#300

Post by tchock23 »

chairmanmow wrote: post #260
tchock23 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it an "emerging area?" It came out in 2008. In the tech world that is a lifetime.

Smart contracts came out in 2015 on Ethereum apparently. What came out in 2008? Bitcoin 1.0? Things do move fast in tech, you may want to keep up with the latest versions before writing off the web saying you've got it figured out based on your experience with the Mosaic browser. Sometimes opinions need updating too, everything evolves.

Yes, I was referring to blockchain and bitcoin rather than ‘smart’ contracts.
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